A guide to getting married in Thailand - Part 2
Welcome to part 2 of my guide to getting married in Thailand......
Our day started with an early morning taxi ride to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The journey took about 45 minutes, due to horrendous congestion and cost over 250 baht.
The reason for our trip was to get the Freedom of Affirmation document and translated copy, stamped and certified by the Legalisation and Naturalisation Division.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shares it's offices with the Department of Consular Affairs and the full address is 123 Chaeng Wattana Road, Laksi District, Bangkok, 10210. Their opening of hours are officially 8.00-11.30 and 13.30-17.30
Here is a link to their website.......
http://www.mfa.go.th/web/2630.php
We arrived just after 8.30 and the ministry was already starting to get busy. I dread to think how long the queues would have been if we'd arrived later!!!
The Legalisation Department was on the 2nd floor. Upon arriving, I advised the staff on the front desk what I needed, they then told me to fill in an "Application for Legalisation" form and I must return to them, once the form had been completed, to get my queue ticket.
The form looks like this........
They provide 2 services, standard and express. The standard service takes 3-4 days to authorise your documents and they return them to you by post. Whereas, the express service offers same day collection. I chose the latter which cost 800 baht.
We had to wait about 30 minutes to submit the paperwork and were asked to return at Midday to collect the authorised copies.
This may not sound like a long wait but, there is not much in the way of entertainment near the Ministry, so we didn't have much choice but to wait on the premises. There was a decent canteen, a shop and book store, so we were able to while away a bit of time.
However, come Midday the documents were not ready and we ended up waiting until 1.30 for them to be returned.
Once you have the documents, you then need to take them to an Amphur (district administrative office) to register your marriage and get an official wedding certificate. We decided to do this in our home town, rather than enduring another taxi journey in Bangkok.
The cost of registering the marriage is 200 baht and you sign the following document which the registrar has prepared.......
and will then receive your wedding certificate which looks like this........
When we had finished at the Ministry, we returned to Sampeng to do a bit of sightseeing and, of course, more shopping!!!
The following pictures were taken at Wat Traimit, which is famous for it's 5 tonne solid gold Buddha and is somewhere that I had always wanted to visit.
We finished our day with a seafood dinner at a street side restaurant. Our meal of curried prawns, seafood salad and Tom Ka Gai (chicken in cocnut milk) cost just over 800 baht.
The choice of dining options, in Sampeng, was fantastic. There were restaurants around every corner and as you can see from the photos, the roads come alive at night, with street vendors and market stalls.
Our day started with an early morning taxi ride to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The journey took about 45 minutes, due to horrendous congestion and cost over 250 baht.
The reason for our trip was to get the Freedom of Affirmation document and translated copy, stamped and certified by the Legalisation and Naturalisation Division.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shares it's offices with the Department of Consular Affairs and the full address is 123 Chaeng Wattana Road, Laksi District, Bangkok, 10210. Their opening of hours are officially 8.00-11.30 and 13.30-17.30
Here is a link to their website.......
http://www.mfa.go.th/web/2630.php
We arrived just after 8.30 and the ministry was already starting to get busy. I dread to think how long the queues would have been if we'd arrived later!!!
The Legalisation Department was on the 2nd floor. Upon arriving, I advised the staff on the front desk what I needed, they then told me to fill in an "Application for Legalisation" form and I must return to them, once the form had been completed, to get my queue ticket.
The form looks like this........
They provide 2 services, standard and express. The standard service takes 3-4 days to authorise your documents and they return them to you by post. Whereas, the express service offers same day collection. I chose the latter which cost 800 baht.
We had to wait about 30 minutes to submit the paperwork and were asked to return at Midday to collect the authorised copies.
This may not sound like a long wait but, there is not much in the way of entertainment near the Ministry, so we didn't have much choice but to wait on the premises. There was a decent canteen, a shop and book store, so we were able to while away a bit of time.
However, come Midday the documents were not ready and we ended up waiting until 1.30 for them to be returned.
Once you have the documents, you then need to take them to an Amphur (district administrative office) to register your marriage and get an official wedding certificate. We decided to do this in our home town, rather than enduring another taxi journey in Bangkok.
The cost of registering the marriage is 200 baht and you sign the following document which the registrar has prepared.......
and will then receive your wedding certificate which looks like this........
When we had finished at the Ministry, we returned to Sampeng to do a bit of sightseeing and, of course, more shopping!!!
The following pictures were taken at Wat Traimit, which is famous for it's 5 tonne solid gold Buddha and is somewhere that I had always wanted to visit.
We finished our day with a seafood dinner at a street side restaurant. Our meal of curried prawns, seafood salad and Tom Ka Gai (chicken in cocnut milk) cost just over 800 baht.
The choice of dining options, in Sampeng, was fantastic. There were restaurants around every corner and as you can see from the photos, the roads come alive at night, with street vendors and market stalls.
Comments
I am going to get married this month. I have been doing so much of research to find out the procedure. Then I came across your articles, I find it very useful.